“Today, in our field, there is so much talent and recognition that we are reaching a saturation point. An artist should no longer strive only for breathtaking craftsmanship; he should, instead, try to help us live better, either by dressing the wounds that are constantly being opened by society, or by offering solutions to get us out of the mess we’re in…But it’s going to be difficult and we have a lot of work to do.” - Jean 'Moebius' Giraud

Friday, May 26, 2006

OBELISK_update

A week and a day and no new posts? Bad, bad, bad.

As promised, here are a few preview pages of the book I'm working on. It's a 150+ page graphic novel of which these are pages 1-6, then pages 10&11. The initial idea was to set the whole thing in a snow storm so that I wouldn't have to draw any of those annoying backgrounds. Unfortunately, it didn't end up that way - stupid establishing shots.

I've finished 60 some-odd pages so far (and it all depends on your definition of 'finished') but I've had to slow down considerably - work-work is in full swing now, truncating the time I've had in the past to do either those nifty 90 minute sketches or the work I'm doing on the GN. Hopefully that'll change soon. Dig it.

donal - that's a question that warrants an extremely long answer from me. i hate typing so i'll keep it semi-short. legibility (in action, storypoint, body language, scenery, etc.) is the ultimate discipline that was pounded into me when i started storyboards: that image better read at first pass because it's going to be moving so many frames per second. so now i focus on that aspect specifically. i'm not saying i *never* fail at the attempt, but these days i care less about how many nuts and bolts i put on a design or how many shells can i draw ejecting out of that gun. that discipline even makes its way into the figures that i draw - i.e. while it may be true that a shoulder may not normally fuction that way, my intent wasn't trying to draw something that could hold up as an anatomically correct forearm and bicep. i focus rather on whether i'm communicating the proper motion, attitude, weight, *whatever* by drawing it in that manner, tweaked and pushed in its proportion. if you've ever freeze-framed certain actions in an animated movie you'll see how retarded the drawings can look. but the point in those films isn't perfect drawings (well, sometimes it is), but instead to convey the proper subtext of whatever a character might be trying to communicate. oh, also - draw hot chicks. the hotter the better.

jon - thanks man. old guy is fun to draw.

chris - i'm tryin' man, i'm tryin. but this hand has a speed limit and it's all i can do before it falls of, you know? heh. as far as B&W vs. color goes, it's strictly based on how it manages to see print. if i do it on my own, i can only finance a B&W publication. but should i manage to convince a publisher to print it for me, then i'd guess color wouldn't be too far fetched.

Eric,These pages are amazing! Got a chance to see them, because Ivan posted them over at the NYC Mech forums over at the Image forums.Can't wait to see this thing in print. I can only flip through Cybernary, Majestic and Ladytron so many times (but still everytime is worth it)...

You wouldn't by any chance have any penciled pages that you wouldn't mind posting? I have an eager inking hand (which I just scratched on a Paul Pope Robin panel, that I also finally updated my blog with). Would like to take my hand at inking more styles, just for practice.

hey eric, been lurking here looking at your sketches for quite some time, i've been a fan of your stuff since dinosaurs roamed and all that, and i gotta say, these pages have the most visual and storytelling intensity i've ever seen out of your sequential work, it's very exciting. just thought i'd drop in my two cents...